The GirlAlive Blog

I shop at the 99p store a lot.  The one in my small town is not bad and sometimes has good deals, and it's a good place to get caulking guns and coloring books and hamster food at the same time.  I've even found pregnancy tests there.  But I wouldn't trust the 99p condoms.  There's a line.

Anyway, a while back my husband and I were just browsing the 99p store and looking for intersting stuff (and craft supplies for me) when we found some disturbing/funny items in the food section.  We found the following marked 3 for 99p.

I wouldn't have been so amused if it had been called Pot O' Fruit, or even if it had followed the lead of the British food item Pot Noodle and called itself Pot Fruit.  But by calling it FruityPot, the main thing they are selling you is pot, which happens to be fruity.   Not fruit in a pot, or fruit with some pot, but pot that is fruity.  I have eaten the pineapple in a sweet and sour dish, but the mandarin remains in my cupboard.

Then we found on the "2 for 99p" shelf, this brilliant little item:

In case you couldn't extrapolate, it is called "Celebrity" with the description "Danish Pork Luncheon Meat."  It is imitation Spam.  It may be made from pork.  It may be made from blonde Danish girls.  But it certainly isn't actually Danish.  Further proof of its lack of Danishness:

My Asian language skills aren't great, but that looks a whole lot like Chinese or Japanese to me.  Last time I checked, that's not the alphabet they use in Denmark.  If the fact that it is bargain priced meat of questionable origins isn't bad enough, it is also going to stay fresh until 2012.  I could hang onto this can and eat it while watching the London Olympics.  Or not.

In fact, I did eat the can of Celebrity.  I can't swear that it was actual pork, and I'm 100% convinced that it was not Danish.  It tasted like Spam, but not quite as good.  I had it with sweet and sour sauce and the pineapple FruityPot.  And I survived to tell the tale. 

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 11:59 AM | Permalink

Yesterday was my third wedding anniversary.  My husband and I have been married for three years and we have lived together for two and a half years.  (Marriage?  Fine.  Living together?  Don't want to rush these things.)

Yesterday we spent our anniversary bathing guinea pigs and running tedious errands.  But today, we went out for dinner.

We got on the bus to the town center to get the bus to the restaurant.  There was a group of people who were either going to a rave or were insane.  Neon colors and big hair and fishnet stockings and furry legwarmers all over the place.  I was happy that they were not on my bus.

We went to the neighborhood of the restaurant early to go to Lupe Pinto's to get American food.  Root beer and graham crackers and Nutter Butters.  Hooray!  Then we had time to kill before our reservations, so we went into a pub to get out of the rain.  I kept looking at the bar and thinking about my favorite game, Drunken Masters.  I had diet Coke.

Then we went to the restaurant, a little tiny place called Katie's Diner.  There are about a dozen tables and you absolutely must make reservations because they're very popular.  It is advertised as an American style diner, and I've never had the Scottish interpretation of American food, so I was looking forward to it.  It's a small place run by a married couple.  Geoff takes the orders and Kate is the chef.

It would be funnier if I could go down a list of how they got American food wrong.  But in this case I totally can't do that.  We started out by sharing an order of jalapeno poppers.  They were exactly like what I remember from home, but bigger, fresher, and presented better.  For a main course I had the Mexiburger.  It was a thick slab of top quality Scottish beef, topped with cheese, salsa, sour cream, and jalapenos.  It was quite simply the best thing I've eaten in a long time.  The burger was grilled to perfection.  The fries were fresh and hot and perfect.  I had been craving a proper thick hamburger, and the one I had at Katie's Diner could stand up next to (or even above) any of the top quality burgers in the US.

Then there was dessert.  I ordered double chocolate brownies.  It was a beautiful arrangement of little bites of brownie topped with ice cream.  The brownies were perfect.  Slightly crisp on the outside and warm and soft in the middle, with rich fudge sauce.  The ice cream was good proper rich ice cream, not the fluffy stuff you get so many places here.  

My husband loved it as much as I did.  In fact, he insisted on booking another reservation before we left.  So it looks like we've found a new favorite restaurant.  It takes two buses to get there, but it's entirely worth it.  It's a perfect cure for homesick Americans in Edinburgh. 

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 07:24 PM | Permalink

My British food review site has a new review that I just uploaded.   I have posted the official review for digestive biscuits.  And if you want to try some for yourself, for a limited time my sponsor English Tea Store is having a buy one get one free sale on digestive biscuits, among other things.  Please check it out.  Thanks.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 12:22 PM | Permalink

Last time my husband and I went to Tesco's together, we went a little crazy just buying whatever looked good.  One of the products that ended up in our cart, mostly because it was on sale, was a yogurt and fruit thing called Frusi.  It was in the ice cream section and looked fairly healthy, and I thought it would make a nice healthy dessert.  We tried it, and it was really good.  But we both thought, "This would be a great breakfast."

I hate breakfast.  I hate scrambling to find something to shove in my mouth when I'm still half asleep.  I only eat breakfast because I have to because of one of my medications.  So a little pot of fruit and yogurt with cereal on the bottom is a super easy way to go.  But I don't really like the usual non-frozen fruit and yogurt as much because the fruit is all cooked and processed.  With Frusi, it is frozen fresh fruit, so there is no sugary syrup involved.  And even better, each serving is right around 100 calories.

I promise I'm not getting paid by Walls.  I just love these things and want plenty of people to buy them so they don't go off the market.

Alana

www.girlalive.com 

Posted by Alana at 06:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Okay, so last night I was bored so I made something creative for dinner, and it actually turned out really good.

Chili Cheese Fry Casserole

• Frozen french fries
• processed cheese slices
  
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 onion
• 1 celery stalk
• 1 can baked beans (vegetarian if you're in America)
• 1 Tbsp chili powder
• cumin (1/2 tsp maybe?)
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 3-4 Tbsp barbeque sauce

Cook the ground beef until it is browned and stuff and drain off the grease.  Add the onions and celery and if you want to maybe some broccoli or corn or something.  Add the chili powder (use more in the US - the chili powder is hotter in the UK), cumin, garlic powder and maybe a dash of cinnamon if you're fancy.  Stir it all around and then dump in the beans and barbeque sauce and stir it all up.

Put a fairly thick layer of frozen fries in the bottom of a small baking dish (8x8 or whatever).  Cover that with a layer of processed cheese slices.  Then dump in the meat and bean mixture.  Cover that with more cheese.  Put a later of more french fries over the top of that.  Bake it in the oven at 350 F or 180 C for 60 to 90 minutes.  Whenever it looks hot and done.

So that's my recipe for chili cheese fry casserole.  If you're in America, you could probably also use tater tots instead of fries.  But they don't have tater tots here.

Alana

www.girlalive.com
 

Posted by Alana at 11:12 AM | Permalink

So, I finally got my British food thing up and running on my web site.  It's pretty good so far.  Most people rip on British food, saying that it is all bland or deep fried.  It is very similar to the food I ate in the US, and isn't all bland or deep fried any more than all American food is hamburgers and pizza. 

I'm just hoping that my British food reviews won't offend my husband.  He loves most of the food here, but I find a large portion of it weird.  I don't like the dried fruit-based desserts, and I don't particularly like haggis.  He might have a tendency to take the food reviews personally, because he's very proud of his Scottishness.  But the truth is, for every British food I don't like (fruit cake and organ meat), there are dozens of other British foods I love (tikka masala, jaffa cakes, mushy peas, and English cucumbers).

Not that I'm going to stop looking for American foods.  I miss Jif and Velveeta.

Alana

www.girlalive.com 

Posted by Alana at 02:22 PM | Permalink

I've been working for the last few days on a new web project.  My husband and I were discussing ways to increase traffic, thereby selling more t-shirts and making more money.  We decided I need to do a wacky stunt.  But I'm not telling you any more until I get some more content ready on my new project.  But I will tell you that there is food involved.  And also some things I barely consider food.

I think I've also finally worked out the issues with this blog.  It's annoying, but I do have a work-around for it.  I need to update 3 different things to get the blog to update.  Grr.

Ooo!  I also found out that CostCo has American peanut butter!  Some of our friends have offered to bring us there.  It isn't Jif, but it is Skippy, which is almost as good.  I guess they also have some other American stuff like maple syrup.

Alana

www.girlalive.com 

Posted by Alana at 12:51 PM | Permalink

diaryland entry 10:43 p.m. - 2005-12-02

Hello.

There are 2 reasons that I'm all hyper today.

First of all, my book got published today. I can legally hold the title of "Cookbook Author" now. How weird is that? Anyway, it's for sale at my store, http://www.girlalive.com/tshirts/. It's pretty exciting.

Then the other reason I'm all excited is that my husband and I will be going to the pet store tomorrow to buy some guinea pigs. I don't know what they will look like, but I know they will be cute. And they will be female. Because we do not want any breeding, and 2 boys will just fight all the time. Boys are like that.

Getting some guinea pigs makes all the wounds from cutting and stapling the chicken wire for the cage worth it. I've still got scratches all over my arms and hands. But now there is a cage, where formerly there was just a coffee table, a toilet seat, and a roll of chicken wire.

Alana
www.girlalive.com

Posted by Alana at 08:27 PM | Permalink

diaryland entry 5:49 p.m. - 2005-11-04

I've been watching the show "The F Word" which is a show by the evil and foul-mouthed chef from "Hell's Kitchen", Gordon Ramsay. In the show, he is saying that he has started a campaign to "get women back in the kitchen."

A lot of people in the UK are up in arms, assuming that he is campaigning to keep women barefoot and pregnant and domestic, like the 50's. But I do not believe that is his intent at all. I believe that he has seen that in entering the workplace and relying on packaged food and fast food, women have given up a great deal of independence.

Women of the last few generations have seen cooking, sewing and other "home" kind of arts as symbols of women being "kept" by men and being dependent on them. However, by giving up cooking, women have in fact become more dependent on men. After all, men are the chefs in the restaurants and the packaged food factories.

Women have put themselves in the position of being completely dependent on men for their very survival. If you are a woman who has not learned to cook, you are in the shameful position of not being able to live without a man feeding you.

I'm with Gordon Ramsay. Women need to get back into the kitchen and show that they really are independent. Make good and healthy food for your family! And if you're single, prove that you care about yourself, and make good and decent food for yourself! Stop eating things prepared by pimply teenagers in fast food places! You don't need them to survive. You just need a few skills and some confidence.

Take a class at the local community college, or just start reading cookbooks and watching cooking shows on tv. You can't be a strong, independent woman if you can't even feed yourself.

*stepping off soapbox*

Alana
www.girlalive.com

Posted by Alana at 08:23 PM | Permalink

diaryland entry  12:17 p.m. - 2005-03-11

I just finished lunch, and there was a wee blue speck in my hamburger. I know that the cafeteria buys pre-formed hamburgers, so it is not their fault. Something blue ended up inside my burger at the meat factory. It makes me glad that all the hamburgers are cooked well done. Alton Brown insists that well-done beef has no flavor. But I like the wee blue specks and other foreign objects to be fully sanitized by heat before I eat them.

It is still snowing. It is March 11th. It has been switching between sub-zero temperatures and snowstorms since December. Kinda getting bored of the gray and white landscape. And the cold. And the puffy insulated coats. And the snow boots. And the eczema making me look like a diseased freak.

On the brighter side, at least it is Friday.

Alana
www.girlalive.com

Posted by Alana at 07:57 PM | Permalink

Originally published on diaryland, 2:12 p.m. - 2005-02-09

I'd like to take a moment to sing the praises of the corporate cafeteria at my office.

Alton Brown (www.altonbrown.com) says that you shouldn't eat too much food that was prepared by people you wouldn't want to hug. I agree. I do not like to eat food prepared by surly 10th graders in fast food places. When I lived in Seattle, I could get decent food from the various food stands near my office. But it wasn't great.

I'm not saying I'd actually like to hug the people at the cafeteria in my office. In fact, given a choice, I'd rather not. But the company cafeteria, done correctly, can have a small fraction of the charm of an old diner. There is decent food at a good price, prepared by people who don't rank as family or loved ones, but who at least rank as co-workers. I think this is an advantage. They're not going to do anything weird to your food when they know that you will be seeing them face-to-face 5 days a week.

Besides that, the food in the cafeteria at my office is pretty good. They do really good hamburgers and also good mashed potatoes and french fries. And I don't even like french fries.

So if your office has a good cafeteria, take a moment to be grateful. It could be a lot worse.

Alana
www.girlalive.com

Posted by Alana at 07:31 PM | Permalink